


Chaos

by thedevilchicken



Category: Jurassic Park (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:17:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian's life is chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chaos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yaseanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yaseanne/gifts).



Chaos had always been Ian's thing, since the very first time he'd heard about it. It explained the inexplicable, encapsulated endless possibility, spoke of fate in natural, mathematical terms. That appealed to him. He took it and ran.

He taught chaos, whenever he was actually situated in a classroom. He guest lectured on it, to specialists and non-specialists alike, made it accessible to people all around the world. He wrote books on it, multiple books, a whole series of books that delved deeper and deeper and sucked in new generations. He made math appealing. He almost made it cool.

Chaos had always been his thing, and not just because it usually provided him a great opening with the ladies. Chaos was his academic interest. It was his specialism, his area of expertise. 

However, it was hard to call chaos his passion. Especially after the fourteenth or fifteenth cycle.

Ian Malcolm lived a full life. He'd been married seven times in the end, lived and worked all over the world, had a great relationship with his kids even though Kelly liked to remind him on a pretty frequent basis that he was, in essence, an oversexed philandering jackass. He always guessed that was fair enough, right up to the end. 

When his time came, he was 83 years old and living with his 50-something seventh Mrs Malcolm. They had a beautiful beachside home in Malibu where the sound of the waves was never far away and he had enough money in the bank that everyone from the maid to the window cleaner to his newest Mrs Malcolm pretended not to care if he scrawled indecipherable problems all over all of the glass doors overlooking the beach. He died in his sleep. And when he woke in the morning, he was back in Jurassic Park.

Drs Grant and Sattler didn't understand his confusion and he guessed he couldn't really expect them to. They were driving through the park in the jeep, they'd just seen their first dinosaur and frankly, he understood their focus was much more intent on the science experiment gone awry that was John Hammond's island than it was on the rock star mathematician having a quiet breakdown. He remembered how it had felt to see the dinosaurs. His body still felt the thrill of adrenaline he'd felt the first time.

He pinched himself. He had Dr Grant slap him, which he seemed to do with more than the requisite amount of glee. The jeep still smelled like oil and new upholstery and the grass was dewy and he was _there_ , with such immediacy that it turned his stomach. It was all real, it was all happening, but he remembered his other life with such precision, at least as much precision as the average 83-year-old ever had. There were details he'd forgotten but that were suddenly familiar all over again. Everything was happening the way it had before. It couldn't be a dream. It wasn't.

There was no way to explain what was happening to him to the people around him. They were just as caught up in the moment as they had been the first time, and Dr Grant wasn't the only one to eye him like he'd lost what little sanity he'd ever possessed. He learned quickly and gave no particular explanation when he asked to leave. They told him no, there was a storm coming in and the last flight's manifest was already full. He was more insistent. They told him no, more insistently. He caused a scene, which he guessed wasn't the only time in his life - either life - that he'd done so. And the pilot relented, said they'd get him off the island with the final run. 

The flight went down. The last thing he remembered before waking back there in the jeep again was how it felt to drown.

He tried again the next time. He knew enough about enough exotic diseases to fake it and get them to leave _right then_ , take him back to the mainland, except it all ended in tears and screaming and even a bit of additional fire that time, death a surprising combination of burning and drowning. He tried _again_ the time after that, a different route, with no more success - arguably less, given the body count. 

He stopped trying to leave after the seventh time. He'd had enough of breathing in water till he died. He needed to take a different tack.

The eighth time, he tried to think it all through logically. He hung back in the visitor centre, feigned illness to be left off the tour and he questioned everything he'd ever known about chaos, about consequence, about the workings of the world, and every idea seemed ludicrous given the situation at hand. String theory, M-theory, the cyclic model of the multiverse, nothing fit what he was experiencing, nothing was exact enough, nothing explained it all and nothing offered anything that resembled a way out. And so the natural conclusion was that he lacked sufficient data. Chaos still made sense; he just couldn't see it from where he was standing.

He stayed in the control room instead of going out in the jeep; all of the others died, and then the raptors found him. It was a welcome change from the water.

He made for the port. He heard it on the radio when the tyrannosaurus got to the cars; he still couldn't muster much empathy for the lawyer but he'd never meant for the kids to get eaten. It didn't seem to matter when he was run down by a jeep in the road.

He went with the tour and he tried to help, more than he had the first time. He knew what would happen, but apparently chaos had more surprises in store: eaten by the T-Rex was the most comical ending he'd had yet.

And, after the tenth, the twentieth, _thirtieth_ time he'd died trying to get first himself and then all the rest of them out of there alive, he decided to play it exactly the same way he had the very first time. He pretended nothing was wrong. He pretended he hadn't seen it all before, and he tried to recall how it had happened; it turned out that an approximation wouldn't do and he went through it five more times before he worked out how he'd survived that very first time. He'd lived Jurassic Park over and over more times than he'd been able to keep track of by the time the survivors left. He hoped like hell he'd never have to see another dinosaur.

He had no idea if escape was the point, if the inevitable repetition was the point, or indeed if there even was a point at all. He went back to his office in Austin and he tried to figure it out. He spoke with other mathematicians, every physicist he could contact, tried to make sense of it. His work changed focus entirely, maybe even improved, came on in leaps and bounds perhaps also because he still had the memory of at least another 30 years of experience in another life, a life whose existence this phenomenon had completely wiped out. But he came up with nothing in three years, four years, nothing except theories, nothing practical, nothing useful, no solution. 

And, when everything he'd done before started to change, when his life was different this time around, he actually started to believe that it was over. He started to relax. The problem was, when he didn't go out to Isla Sorna this time around, apparently somehow it sparked the freaking dinosaur apocalypse. He ended up eaten by velociraptors for the nth time, velociraptors in _Austin_ because that somehow ended up being possible due to his absence. And, of course, afterwards, _he woke up in Jurassic Park_.

He went through it by the numbers, escaped, got home. He worked again. He worked the next five or six or eight or fifteen times through, started to lose count of how long he'd been living in the end because 83 years plus six here and five there, ten the next time, he had to have been alive for more than a century, maybe two. He kept going. A hundred and fifty years came and went. He'd been to Jurassic Park so many times he knew every inch of it, died in every way imaginable and a few he hadn't thought were even physically possible. He'd walked every path. He'd encountered every dinosaur.

Once or twice, he killed himself. The first time wasn't the worst because the choice was easy: continue watching himself being eaten alive or shoot himself in the head. The second time was worse because he just did it as an experiment, sat down in the back of the jeep and borrowed the driver's gun while the others were exploring and he had to work himself up to it even though he was fairly certain what would happen. He closed his eyes as he pulled the trigger and when he opened them, it was like it never happened. After that, suicide became nothing more than a way to hit reset. It was a useful option to have, just in case he took a wrong step, to save himself time and just get back to the start so he could get out and get back to work. He got good at it. He guessed he should've found that strange.

The first new move he made in a hundred cycles was kissing Ellie Sattler. It was entirely a spur-of-the-moment and it was a bad idea because he knew her, he knew her story, he knew she was with the perma-grouchy Grant at that moment and then later she'd marry and have kids and seem happy. But in all the death and all the work and the frustration he decided it'd make an interesting experiment, to see whether he could change things there in any even subtle way and still get out. 

She slapped him the first time, which was a fair reaction. She slapped him hard enough to knock the glasses from his face the second time, which he thought was a bit over the top. She introduced her knee to his groin the time after that. He got the hint.

Cycle number four of the experiment, he switched to compliments and remained unharmed, at least by her if not the island full of carnivores. Cycles five, six, seven, he worked on the right combination, the right words, the turn of phrase, the mannerisms, the performance of Ian Malcolm that finally in eight and nine and ten made her sneak away from the others to speak with him alone. They were gone for maybe twenty minutes while the rest of the visitors talked; the first time, they kissed and she didn't assault him in return; the second time she let him slip his hands in under her shirt, let him open the buttons, let him suck on a nipple, tease it lightly with his tongue. It was progress, though he guessed his experiment had veered away from his original parameters.

The third time, he pulled off his glasses and hooked them into the front of his shirt. She let him unbutton and pull down her little khaki shorts in the back of a jeep, totally unashamed, exactly the way he'd hoped she'd be. He nuzzled the hair between her thighs and parted her lips with his thumbs, went down on her through cycles eleven, twelve, thirteen, until he knew exactly what she liked. She actually encouraged him to get inside her in cycle fourteen. Fifteen and they did it standing, her shorts around her ankles, her hands against the side of the jeep, his thrusts making it rock on the pavement. 

Of course, none of them made it off the island in any of those cycles. Apparently screwing Ellie Sattler there on Isla Nublar was completely out of bounds, no matter how much either of them liked it. 

He stuck to the script the next time around and they made it out alive. He called her when he'd recovered, again, _again_ , the injuries he had to keep letting himself suffer somehow managing to feel less severe every time, a little more bearable because time had started to mean less and less. She'd broken up with Alan after a couple of months and she agreed to a date. The first few times through it was like pornography, a light dinner of witty restaurant banter followed by every position they could think of back at her place, like seeing each other again was enough to bring back something of the desperation and adrenaline they'd felt out there in the park. She was incredible. He could barely keep up.

To his credit, he thought, he did feel bad for it; he'd spent so long learning her that he almost couldn't bear it when she went down on him in the passenger side of his car in a darkened parking lot, clearly not sure how it had come to this so quickly. And so he changed his MO, he took it slow and suddenly it was something entirely different. She didn't change her name when they married and he didn't cheat once, at least not after the first couple of cycles. He spent a lifetime with her. They challenged each other. He told her he loved her every day and she never understood how he could look forward to the end the way he did, but she said it helped as the end came closer. The cancer made that end inevitable.

"I'll see you again," he told her, the day she died. She was 87 years old then, still beautiful, still passionate. When he saw her again, their whole life had never happened. He made it happen all over again. Twice. He was happy. The solution didn't seem to matter.

He screwed it up the next time through, the fact they were each at different levels of knowledge of their relationship slipping his mind for a crucial moment and the next thing he knew she was calling him a pervert and throwing water in his face. It was an entertaining experience, in a really weird kind of way, and he went with it, took a different turn, went back to work for a few months and set about his attempt to figure out the crazy situation he was still in, _still_ in. Chaos still possessed him. He almost thought if he could trace it all back, he'd find a cause; of course, that was pure impossibility.

He noticed Alan Grant was due to give a guest lecture there in Austin and he booked himself a place, went along, heckled from the audience and Grant looked so hilariously pissed until he realised it was him, then grouchy-amused after. Grant had colleagues in Austin to show him around, take him to dinner, wine and dine and offer paleontological collaborations Ian was sure must've sounded tempting, but Ian caught him the next morning and took him out for breakfast. The whole thing was surprisingly amicable, just like Grant's breakup with Ellie was, each and every time. And Ian, being Ian, came up with the idea right then, over pancakes. When Alan Grant made some offhand remark about how Ian couldn't charm _everyone_ , he decided he'd prove him wrong. They made a bet, though it was a bet one of them would never remember.

Jurassic Park was the testing ground, just like it always was. And it took more work, it took more cycles, it took all his guile and his charm and his wit because Alan Grant was harder to convince than Ellie had ever been - she was so much more open, more fun, more spontaneous, a genuine joy to know, whereas Alan, well. Alan was the classic curmudgeon, surly and unimpressed. Ian talked to him, learned about him, applied everything he'd learned about dinosaurs and Alan's specialism and Alan's life after the park; somehow it seemed like nothing at all to spend a cycle working and watching and making notes, befriending him, seeing what happened when Alan went to Isla Sorna and then the aftermath with Billy Brennan. Apparently Mr Grouchy wasn't quite as straight as Ian had always assumed, judging by the long life he led that cycle with his former student.

The next time around, Ian knew him and he knew what to do. He pushed him too far, which was part of the plan, got into a fight and saw how that turned out, with a violent kiss that took them both by surprise and then bruises and reluctant apologies before the running and the screaming and the T-Rex. He pushed him again the next time, felt morally reprehensible in every possible way as they made a run for it instead of saving Lex and Tim and spent days in the jungle, sticking together, snarking, bickering. It was sex as a weapon and sex as opposed to death as they pushed up against each other, jerked each other off, and Ian found himself laughing against Alan's throat as he came because no matter how many times he lived and died there was always something to surprise him. The next time, he waited; he went through his own Isla Sorna experience to get to tag along with Alan's because frankly, death had ceased to hold any horror for him now that he'd lived through it so many times over. It made a nice change.

And then, the next time, he waited until they were back there in Austin eating pancakes and he'd fashioned himself through long experience into exactly what Alan wanted, what he needed. He was someone who understood what he'd been through. He was intellectually stimulating. His conversation was witty enough that it rendered his egotism amusing and they sparked off of each other once Alan let his guard down just a fraction and talked about something that actually held his interest. It wasn't violence and fireworks and hot ‘n' heavy in the back seat of Alan's rental car and that was just as well ‘cause neither of them was getting any younger and Ian knew his leg was never the same after the injury, no matter what he did, whose medical attention he sought. Alan went home, but they kept in touch and each time they talked on the phone or emailed though Alan hated email, they got closer and closer to something Alan had once bet him couldn't happen. They were never friends. It was always two steps to the side of friendship, with a wink and a smile and a hint of something undeniably physical. 

They met at a conference, one of Alan's, something about osteoarchaeology that Ian found vaguely interesting on an intellectual level, maybe because of all the time he'd spent peering at dinosaur bones to try to get a better picture of what Jurassic Park was and how they could all survive intact, even the damn lawyer. But Ian wasn't there for that, had oh-so-coincidentally arranged to be in town to meet a physicist acquaintance he was helping out with math for a paper due for publication, but they ran into each other in the hotel lobby on the second night. Ian knew how to seem surprised. It seemed Alan really was. 

They had a drink together that turned into two, then three. It surprised Ian endlessly that Alan didn't object to the flirting; he actually laughed at one point, and didn't shy away from little pseudo-innocent touches, squeezing his shoulder, knees bumping under the table. They were staying in the same hotel so it was easy enough for them to arrange to meet for breakfast before the conference recommenced, a 7am arrangement that Ian agreed to despite his better judgement and that turned out to be pancakes and maple syrup and a sea of coffee that he absolutely required, Alan actually looking relaxed while Ian just tried to wake up the whole way. And when Ian asked if he wanted to grab dinner that evening, Alan said he'd already made plans with the conference but that he'd meet him after that, for a drink in the hotel bar. 

"It's a date," Ian said, flashing a smile. 

"I guess it is," Alan said, after a moment's pause, and the delivery was so perfectly deadpan that Ian couldn't tell if he was joking or not. That, he guessed, was chaos theory in action; so many variables had led them here, so many Ian had tried so hard to control, and he could still be surprised.

They had a grand total of two drinks that evening, both of them a pricey scotch that Ian paid for, his generosity making Alan scowl momentarily both times. They talked about the conference, since Ian had caught a couple of sessions, skulking in the back like anyone involved that heavily in osteoarchaeology was going to know who the hell he was even if they saw him. Then they went upstairs, caught the elevator and there was a moment when they stopped at Alan's floor when Ian almost thought he wasn't going to leave; Alan turned to him, gave him an absolutely inscrutable look and just for that moment, Ian could've believed they were both going up to his suite, that something else would happen after. But they didn't, Alan stepped out and he went alone, closed the door and toed off his shoes, splashed water on his face because he was getting in too deep. But, he thought, let's face it: he was always in too deep. It was just part of his nature, even after so much time.

There was a knock on the door twenty minutes later, as Ian was futzing around with his laptop, ruing the fact that technology was so slow to advance because he still hated cramped keyboards and touchpads even after all those years of using them before the next inevitable innovation. He answered the door, barefoot, glasses abandoned on the nightstand, chuckled as he shook his head as he saw it was Alan. 

"That was a sorry excuse for a conversation," Alan said. He had his hands on his hips, looking so serious that Ian couldn't help the way he smiled at the incongruity of it. 

"I know it wasn't much of a date," he said, "but you didn't have to come up and complain about it. I thought you _liked_ archaeology, Dr Grant."

Alan seemed to consider this for a moment, and then dismissed the whole thing as he crossed his arms over his chest. 

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" he asked.

"By all means," Ian replied, and stood back with a rather grandiose gesture of welcome. Alan frowned at it disapprovingly then stepped past him into the suite, taking a slow look around him. He wandered around, inspected the trashy art prints on the walls, opened the door to the bathroom and turned back to him.

"You could fit my entire room in there," he said. 

Ian shrugged. "You're welcome to move into the tub."

They stood there, in the middle of the seating area of Ian's suite a few feet from the foot of his unmade bed, not quite awkward, not quite easy, Ian unsure what exactly they were doing there because this hadn't figured in his plan. Alan moved around, picked up the book Ian had been reading, looked over the back cover briefly and tossed it back onto the bed. He fiddled with the TV remote, picked up Ian's glasses from the nightstand and took a look through them, made a noise of faint amusement and gestured at them. 

"How do you see through these?" he asked.

"At least ten times better than I see without them, I guess." 

Ian took a couple of steps forward. Alan stood his ground. Ian moved again, got closer. "For instance, from here I can't tell that you're you and not some kind of a ranch-hand from Wyoming. It's that outfit." He moved another couple of feet closer. "Here, I can tell you're you. But that's only because you smell like cheap coffee and Old Spice." He stepped closer again, right in close, about eighteen inches between them, maybe less, the bare toes of one foot pressed to the toe of Alan's dusty boots. "Right here, I can see you." He reached down, fingers brushing the back of Alan's hand as he took his glasses back from him, and slipped them on. "And now I can see you _well_." 

Alan paused a second, his lips pressed tightly together in what Ian liked to think of as his Disgruntled Thinking Face. Then he reached up and pulled Ian's glasses back off. 

Ian was taller by at least four inches, though the fact he was standing there barefoot seemed to partially even it out; Alan looked at him, he looked at Alan, and a decision was made. 

"Pretend you can't," Alan said. Ian thought he could probably manage that.

The sex was not what he was expecting, judging from their previous experiences back in the park. It was slower and hotter and the only physical injury involved was a lightly pulled shoulder from where Ian really should've known better. It was good but wasn't the best that either of them had ever had, not that that stopped them trying again in the morning, trying again that night, all lube and Alan's not quite awkward laughter as they learned each other's bodies, as they learned each other's scars. It got better quickly, two more days and they were going at it hot and heavy even after the conference ended and they went their separate ways. Ian had always enjoyed the sound of his own voice and it turned out Alan didn't object to listening. Sometimes when Ian phoned, Alan even joined in. He had to admit, once Alan opened up and relaxed, it was more fun than he'd had in twenty cycles or more. It almost seemed like his work was unimportant.

In the start, they met maybe once a month, Alan coming down to Texas or Ian taking a trip up to Montana, not enjoying nights in tents out on the dig site at all and not just because his fashion choices weren't made for it. Then winter came and the dig shut down on schedule, and somehow Ian persuaded Alan that renting an apartment in Austin was exactly the way to go. He helped fix Alan up with a visiting professorship and he introduced him around, put him through the occasional party if only to get that amusing kneejerk reaction to idiocy out of him that he just couldn't cover up. Ian was the kind of irreverent, well-funded jackass who could get away with that, and that meant Alan could by proxy. After a couple more months, it was inevitable that Malcolm and Grant came as a pair.

Alan never left Austin after that, at least not really, not for more than a few months at a time. He only left the rather spartan apartment he was renting because he moved in with Ian, enough space in Ian's place for the two of them to peaceably coexist even when Alan was feeling less than sociable. He had four bedrooms so there was no need for them to share a bed except if they felt inclined to; Alan had his own bathroom; there was more than enough space in the garage for Alan's pickup to park there next to Ian's Porsche. But they'd spend evenings talking over their work, Ian scrawling on a whiteboard they kept in front of the television because neither of them actually gave a damn about cop shows or reality TV, Alan's papers and books and photos spread out all over the furniture because he was messy when he worked and Ian couldn't say he cared even a little. They travelled together, took vacations in crazy places, skydived and dove off of cliffs together, broke bones and didn't care because they always healed. They understood each other. They grew old together, and Alan never once questioned Ian's lack of fear of death. He embraced it.

"I'll see you again," Ian told Alan, the day he died. 

Alan smiled. "Of course you will," he said, just like he believed it.

Alan was 84 years old then, still slim, still strong, still resolutely sceptical with a genuine warmth beneath it that Ian felt somehow he'd been privileged to see. But when he saw him again, back in the goddamn park, their whole life had never happened. He made it happen all over again. Three times, in slightly different permutations, where they moved to Montana or Ian got into archaeology and started wearing khakis. They had a ball. The solution didn't matter at all.

Going back to Jurassic Park got harder and harder every time. He'd lived hundreds of lives, hundreds of years, studied relentlessly, learned more than it should have ever been possible to learn and then there he was again, all teeth and claws and screaming, a goat that had died a hundred times, the same predictable unpredictability and the same damn injuries over and over again. But he took that knowledge with him, decades of playing the piano and his hard-fought black belt in taekwondo, six languages and the ability to pilot a helicopter. He'd clung onto the idea that he'd made the most of his lives. His hold on that suddenly seemed tenuous.

He sat at the dining table in the visitor centre and dropped his head into his hands. It was all about to start again and he thought maybe he'd try something different this time, take that position he'd been offered in England, see if he could get Alan to join him, spend less time on dinosaurs and more time on Roman archaeology or maybe even something that had happened in the last millennium and not closer to the dawn of time. It wasn't likely; throughout it all, Alan's passion had always been palaeontology. And Ian had a feeling that if anything, the answer to his problem was closer to the start of time than the end, untraceable.

"You look tired." 

Ian looked up; he didn't need to put his glasses back on to know that was Alan who'd taken a seat opposite him at the huge dining table.

"Well," he replied. "I guess it's been a long day."

"It's been something, hasn't it," Alan said, a vague smile there that Ian could just make out without his glasses. He knew it well. It twisted at something inside him to see it.

He chuckled bitterly. "You have no idea. Seriously."

"Tell me about it."

And so, he did, even though it was hardly meant as an invitation. 

He told him everything, because what did it matter if he did? It made no difference if he told him what was happening to him, how many times he'd lived this day and hundreds of other days after, how many years, how many times he'd married Ellie, or Sarah Harding, or any of five, six, ten other women. It didn't matter that he told him he'd taken a bet that Alan didn't remember making, that it had led to something unexpected, that it led to a life with him that he'd deliberately repeated over and over with a physical and emotional intimacy Alan couldn't recall they'd ever had. It didn't matter if he explained the math of the situation as he understood it, the twisted physics, that there was no way out, that this was all there was, that this was forever. This was _forever_. He told him everything. 

When he was done, there was a moment of silence between them. And then Alan laughed, loudly, right from his belly, like this was the craziest, most utterly hilarious, most absolutely freaking hysterical thing he'd ever heard in his life, like Ian had just told a brilliant joke and not the never-ending story of their life. 

"Next time, I'll keep it to myself," he muttered, though he guessed he should've been prepared for this.

Alan smiled wryly. He stood, he came closer, and he took the seat next to him. "It's amazing," he said. He put his hand on Ian's shoulder and he squeezed. He rested his forehead against his, his hand at the back of his neck, familiar. "You still think you're the only one."

And Ian laughed. There wasn't anything else he could do, he couldn't find another reaction in him; Alan dragged him to his feet and pushed him back against the nearest wall, pinned him there with his body as he laughed to the verge of breaking down with it, as he twisted his fingers into Alan's shirt, as he yelled into the crook of his neck, overcome. Alan wouldn't let him push him away. He knew. It was happening to both of them. Mathematically, that made even _less_ sense.

"I remember everything," Alan murmured as they stood together. Ian nodded. For once, he had no words.

They were sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall and talking about things that hadn't happened when Ellie walked in and found them fifteen minutes later. Alan stood and he held out a hand to help him up; Ian took it as Ellie frowned at them both.

"We're all waiting," she said. "What have you two been doing?"

"We'll be right with you," Alan told her; she sighed at the lack of real response but gave them a good-natured smile and walked away, out to the cars, to the start of the tour.

"So," Ian said.

"So," Alan replied.

They'd go out to the cars and they'd start again, Ian knew that. And maybe next time around he'd be with Ellie, maybe Alan would have Billy or maybe it would all change again, but that would come and go from life to life, from cycle to cycle. They'd drift back to each other, like that was the point, like chaos had brought them to it, and maybe one day he'd figure out the end. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe it didn't matter if he did or not, but he'd always try.

In the end, chaos wasn't his passion. But it _was_ his life.


End file.
